admins and mods working for reddit (the paid ones) have "tools" to do such things. thats also how /u/spez manipulated user comments who said fuck spez etc. - also how they manipulate /r/place currently. they just paint a huge black square or checkerboard over images they dislike.

Some mods basically thought their job amounted to having a power downvote… they’d banish comments they just didn’t agree with, not abusive, but just something they didn’t like and control the conversation that way. That’s one thing if it’s really their sub, but pretty lame if it’s something like /r/Portland and you’re not allowed to disagree with whatever the mods think on a topic, or even discuss other viewpoints.

Yeh I had this happen to my comment once, but it wasn’t even abusing the mods or anything, it was just not the circle jerk reply the mod wanted. It was one of the most upvoted comments on a post, and all of a sudden it was gone from the top. Lo and behold it was now collapsed down the bottom with a huge positive score. Absolute joke.